


Time Passed

by senorito



Category: Magisterium Series - Holly Black & Cassandra Clare
Genre: IT'S JUST THAT TBK WAS REALLY DEPRESSING AND I DON'T THINK I CAN MAKE FLUFF ANYMORE, M/M, So excited!, but i don't think neither call or tamara is happy, but the doggo is alive :), just sayin, magisterium day 2k17 y'all!, no havoc in here i'm sorry :(, well post tbk at any rate, yeah this is a lot of angst, you try!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-23 21:29:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9678806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/senorito/pseuds/senorito
Summary: Call reallydidn'texpect the magic to work.It hadn't.What had he expected? Tamara had once told him, in a quick, throwaway comment, that doing the exact same thing over and over, and then expecting different results was the definition of insanity. He really hoped he wasn't insane.Some nights, it was hard to tell.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Magisterium Day 2k17, y'all!

Time passed slowly at the Panopticon. Call sat on his cot. Occasionally paced. Once in awhile, overcome with despair, boredom, or grief -maybe a combination of all three- he would just lay face down on the floor, on his elbows and knees, heedless of even his bad leg. Overcome. 

Because Aaron was dead. Because Tamara was probably alone in her room at the Magisterium, and Call was, too, stuck in this horrible prison. He really didn't know how long he had been in there. Wasn't there some sort of right to a speedy trial in the U.S.? _Land of the free_ and all that? He snorted softly. The mages probably didn't think it would apply to them, and even if they did, it _almost certainly_ wouldn't apply to the Enemy of Death. 

After the initial shock of Anastasia's revelations wore off, Call realized that:  
a) She hadn't even given him her real name, so he was stuck thinking of her as just 'Anastasia', because the idea of using any of her possible surnames- 'Tarquin', 'Madden', or even 'Strike'- left a bad taste in his mouth. 'Tarquin' was the last name of some woman 'Anastasia' had killed to take her identity, so that ruled that one out, no matter how effective the disguise was, with 'Madden', the idea of her being Constantine's - _his_ -mother felt uncomfortable and odd, and despite the fact that she was not her stepson, the name 'Strike', more than ever, after he had fumed and fixated on it for God knows how long in his cell, made him want to go complete Evil Overlord on everything in a ten-mile radius, but most of all Alex. Call hated the idea of using any of them, and needless to say he had _no_ idea on what her actual first name could be, so he was just stuck with 'Anastasia'. 

And, b), he was truthfully a bit creeped out by her offer and the way she said it. He knew, yeah, yeah, an Evil Overlord getting creeped out by something, wow, surprising, but- honestly? _"I am going to save you, my son. I am going to set you free."_...? Just the way she had phrased it and her expression as she had said it... She had _told him herself_ that she had often been in contact with Master Joseph over the years so that she could locate Call and infiltrate the Assembly. Did her definition of "saving her son" mean turning him back into Constantine? Would she have terms and conditions she wanted Call to do in return for his freedom? 

Call laughed bitterly to himself in his head. (Most things seemed to be done in his head these days.) Of course she would. Everything had a price. Nothing was ever handed out for free. Ever. Anastasia would bust Call out of the Panopticon so that he could do... something for her. Likewise, Aaron needed to die so that Alex could steal his chaos magic. 

Of course, following the same reasoning, if Call killed Alex, Aaron might be magically allowed to live. He wasn't even surprised at the fact that the thought of killing someone, even a _thing_ like Alex that shouldn't even count, didn't bother him in the slightest. 

Of course, they were all _mages_. Magic should be easy. 

_Nothing_ was ever easy. 

Even, _especially_ , escape from the Panopticon.  
His cell was about the size of a small bedroom, The average bathroom, maybe. Call couldn't use magic to dissolve or melt or sink the walls in- he had most definitely tried, over and over, and they were most definitely magic-proof. But thinking about Alex and Aaron made him angry again, sad and furious and lonely and self-hating and bitter as hell, Call summoned chaos magic again. 

He really didn't care if the guards saw it. He didn't care about messing up the trial he was supposedly going to get, if the Assembly even decided to give him one and didn’t just send a few Masters down to the Panopticon to chop his head off like a chicken because the Enemy of Death didn't even deserve a trial, much less the right to live. He really _didn't_ expect it to work. 

It didn't.  
What had he expected? Tamara had once told him, in a quick, throwaway comment, that doing the exact same thing over and over, and then expecting different results was the definition of insanity. He really hoped he wasn't insane.  
Some nights, it was hard to tell. 

But staring at the traces of smoke blacker than black, a color that Anish Kapoor could only have dreamed of, Call was reminded that he still thought that he might go to insane lengths to bring _him_ back. 

Aaron. 

At the sudden rise in emotion that _absolutely_ meant a lack of control over magic, the chaos, always ready to go unchecked and allowed to devour, rushed outwards, where most of it got absorbed harmlessly into the warded walls and cot, but, out of the corner of his eye, Call saw a box half-filled with prison food that had supposedly been his last meal, but he had barely looked at, dissolve into nothingness. 

The food wasn't significant. Call didn't know whether it was night or day outside the prison, but he assumed that it had been at least a few days since he had last ate. He didn't care about food. What was significant, though, what made Call's head spin, was the realization, even if it seemed obvious, was that _magic still worked_ inside the Panopticon, as long as he didn't try to use it to escape. 

If he could just _figure it out_ , not fail like Constantine had, Call realized that he could try to bring Aaron back. Here. In the Panopticon. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To be honest, Tamara was nervous. What happened in the next few hours could change _everything_. The Assembly had made that clear. _But hadn't her life already been completely changed in the context of a few hours many times before? The Iron Trial. Call's confession in Maine. The hours surrounding everything that had happened- the boys raising Jennifer Matsui, Alex-fucking-Strike_

Somehow, with an odd combination of begging her parents, cajoling the deWinters, and bribing some of the Collegium students (drag racing; don't ask), Tamara found herself walking through the various security gates of the Panopticon, with about eight other mages, all of whom seemed to be at least twenty years older than her. No shit. Unfortunately, it was also no shit that, of all people to accuse, they had decided to try Call for killing that Matsui girl, and _Aaron_. Honestly. Tamara blamed herself more than the Assembly, or Call himself, had any right to blame Call. _He_ hadn't made the choice, conscious or subconscious, to save the Enemy and let the Assembly's Makari die. 

Tamara almost wished the Assembly was blaming her. She almost thought that would make things easier, compared to complete strangers patting her back comfortingly and telling her that it wasn't her fault, that the Enemy of Death had managed it all and that it would be made better the moment he was convicted and given the death penalty. Oh, and that Alex Strike had just decided that he needed to just take a hiatus from school before he finished up his last semester at the Magisterium, a "mental health break", apparently, that no one was questioning. That seemed fair. He was probably following the 'investigation' like she would a fucking slapstick comedy show- doubled over laughing. 

Fuck him. She wanted to kill him. Or at the very least, turn Havoc out in the general area where she knew Alex was and turn a ‘blind eye’. That would be fun. Tamara knew the wolf would enjoy it, and she could tell that he was just as miserable as she was, alone in their room, save for each other. The only reason Graves had fucking allowed her to come to the Panopticon in the first place was on the hope that Call might open up more to her compared to if no one he knew or trusted tried to talk to him. 

Tamara vehemently opposed the fucking trial- but it was the only thing she could think of that would let her talk to Call. Besides Jasper, she felt as if she couldn't trust _anyone_ at the Magisterium; they either wouldn't believe her or would go running up to Graves the moment she said something mildly controversial. Or just seemed distant and sad, like Master Rufus and Alastair did. Of course, Alastair had always been grim, and Rufus solemn, but everything that had happened since looked like it had killed any of their hope or happiness.  
Tamara wondered if she looked like that, pale (or as pale as you could get when your parents were native Iranians) and sad and still, barely moving except to turn away.  
Jasper and she had had some good talks since the night _it_ happened, and Celia's inevitable anger and confusion since the moment Master North broke the news about Call being Constantine and Aaron being _dead_ to the rest of the school led to them trying to explain some things to her, but Tamara didn't remember the last time she had talked to another human being, not including Call or Aaron or Jasper, Celia, Rufus, Alastair, Alex, Alma, Anastasia, or Graves. Was it Gwenda that one time she wanted to share rooms with them because Jelia (yes, that was the ship name she and Aaron had decided on and shipped because maybe _then_ Call would notice the _gigantic_ crush Aaron had on him if Celia was being occupied by Jasper. It wasn't her otp, though; that was reserved for Calron, which Jasper and she held high, without either Aaron or Call knowing) was being disgusting again.  
The mages walking in front of her slowed and turned a perfectly white corner. Tamara really fucking hated being 5'3". The seemingly endless walls had huge floor-to-ceiling glass windows at regular intervals in which she could see the prisoners inside. Some were elementals. Others were human. Tamara shuddered to think of spending a day in there, confined to a space half as small as her bedroom in the Magisterium and with a wall that gave zero privacy. 

Call had been in here for 59 days and counting.  
Maximum Security Cell C3. Hallway 12.  
What the fuck had ever happened to the right to 'a fair and speedy trial'?  
Tamara thought the answer was obvious: Constantine Madden.  
The 'one phone call' rule also obviously hadn't been upheld, either. Tamara had talked to Anastasia Tarquin before she left the Magisterium, and Anastasia had sworn up and down that as far as she knew, (which, as both of them knew, had the grim possibility of being spotty at best), she was the only person _yet, ever_ to be legally authorized by the Assembly to talk to Call. (Anastasia had _also_ sworn up and down that she was Constantine Madden's secret mother, and that she knew a way to break Call out, but Tamara had yet to see evidence of the second, while the first one made sense only because everything else that had happened was equally insane). 

She hadn't talked to him in eight weeks. Or Aaron. Or really, anyone she trusted. 

The other mages stopped, and Tamara punched her way to the front, where, inside the abhorrently tiny cell, Call was sitting on the floor with his back against the farthest wall, which honestly wasn't that far from the glass-window-wall. It was smaller than the bathroom in the Hunt's house, which, compared to hers, was _tiny_ in and of itself. A narrow cot was pushed up against the right wall, and that and what looked like a bed sheet wadded up in the other corner was the only thing in the cell.  
Not even one book to read or a pencil and paper for a single drawing. Tamara shuddered. How could Call bear it? It seemed like all he could do in the last eight weeks had been to brood over Aaron's death. Alone. Because there was literally nothing else to do.  
Not healthy. Not in the slightest.

Not that Tamara hadn't done the same, not that she didn't know that _deserved every little bit_ of blame that existed (because it was true. It _was_ her fault), but she had had other people to distract her occasionally and tasks that needed to be done. Call had been stuck here the entire span, absolutely isolated and with nothing to do with his time but to think. Tamara didn't want to imagine what it might've done to Call. 

He turned around and limped towards the glass wall, and Tamara realised that she had been wrong in her thoughts about Call's mental health.  
Actually, Call's health in general.  
He was worse. 

He looked as if he hadn't been eating or sleeping in a long time- maybe the entire two months he'd been locked up in here. He was horribly skinny, just _raw_ and the fact that it looked like he'd grown at least two more inches didn't help. Call's black hair was greasy, unwashed, and nearly grown out down to his shoulders. Worse of all were his eyes. Even as an annoying, grumpy, kid, Call's eyes had always been somehow odd and _raw_ , very, very distinctive. (Over the long periods where for whatever reason Call hadn't been talking to Aaron and herself, EVEN THOUGH HE HADN'T BEEN TALKING TO THEM, she had had to endure hours of discourse and analytics by Aaron about the precise shape and color of Call's eyes, all while Aaron had a disgustingly dreamy grin on his face)  
Obviously, that was because of Constantine, but now they just seemed _hollow_.  
Like there was nothing left.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed reading this! I don't exactly know when the next update will be, but hopefully soon!


End file.
